Youth marketing and engagement

The second topic is Youth Marketing Online, chaired by Kristján Már and including two speakers. The first is Mel Carson from Microsoft.

Mel begins by talking about the bishop that asked him to help him to recruit monks online. And it worked, surprisingly!

Whatever niche you’re in, people are out there looking for your products and services and looking to change their lives in some way.

A research project Mel was involved in shows that young people are more pragmatic than some might believe. For example, 76% list family right at the top of their list. But 45% also feel they could not live without a computer and internet.

44% of them have played a game in the last week – and sharing is an important element of it. Either in the same room as their friends or online like via Xbox. In game advertising is therefore proving to be a useful tool.

76% of your people use instant messaging – and those people spend 45% of their online time using IM.

Online video is great too – and the effort and size of the screen means people pay more attention to it and are less likely to be drinking. TV has on the other hand become something of a background noise.

He then goes into some examples of what went wrong with some campaigns. Like all the young Singaporean guys searching for bleach. Bleach is a cartoon character, but the company was looking for middle aged American housewives.

As so many people watch TV while online at the same time – it is essential to advertise multi channels.

Online context is important too: advertise to general surfers and info seekers rather than those looking for entertainment.

The future of teens: They will be more interested in news than any other generation, they trust peers more than experts, will not have landlines.

The message is to put your message right in the middle of everywhere, and not just throw a message in a bottle out and hope.

The bottom line is that everyone says they don’t click banners – buy 47% of us have in the last month!

Next onstage is Siôn Portman from Nike UK. He starts by showing a brilliant Nike ad. But he warns that as soon as it gets put out there, people start sharing it, changing it, talking about it and adding their own music etc.

Nike’s youth marketing base point is and always has been great athletes. Ronaldo, Lance Armstrong et al.

Also, poor quality products will soon get a bad rep online in no time.

Great stories around the great products often involving great athletes is Nike Marketing’s key modus operandi.

A current campaign they are running on 5 a side football uses several phases. They start by making a lot of noise beforehand to create anticipation.

They started by giving You Tubers the materials and inspiration to start creating content, then connect with “collectors” in order to finally hook in the casual observers.

Don’t go out of your way to create viral vids. But if something comes up make sure you’re able to use it.

Nikefootball.com is a place for consumers to express themselves. Not nearly as premium as Nike’s TV ads, but cheaper and effective. The plan remains though to use these tools to get people interested in the big TV ads in the end and end up with a holistic marketing campaign.

In a unique twist, the Nike football final in May will be broadcast live solely on YouTube. They don’t know how it will work, but youth are increasingly interested in online video.

He says Nike’s campaign is no longer in their hands because of all the media pick up and social media chatter. And that is just fine by them.

European Search Personality of the year 2014, Kristján Már Hauksson, is the Co-Founder and COO of SMFB Engine, based in Oslo, Norway.
This newfound digital activation/marketing agency works closely with the award winning creative agency, SMFB, in making sure that each idea has the digital presence to make it fly. Kristján is a publish author on the topic Internet Marketing and Search Engine Marketing.